Paul M. Hollingsworth

Whole Language and the Practitioner

A detailed comparison of the typical public school classroom and a whole language classroom

Investigating Topic-Related Attitude: Effect on Reading and Remembering Text

Abstract This study explored the effect of topic-related attitude on childrens learning and remembering from text. The subjects were 58 sixth-grade students randomly assigned to three topic-related attitude treatment groups. A 3 × 2 × 2 (Favorable-, Unfavorable-, and Neutral-Attitude Groups x Positive and Negative Passages x Immediate and Delayed Recall) repeated measures ANCOVA design was used for the study. Teachers were trained to present a social studies unit about a fictitious country, Titubia. Results within the limitations of the study supported the notion that experimentally created topic-related attitudes do not appear to interfere with the immediate recall of text-based information or cause younger subjects to selectively encode that information. Our study showed that experimentally created topic-related attitudes influenced the delayed reconstruction of memories for text but did not exert sufficient influence to interfere with the initial reception of information from text.

Whole Language with LD Children.

Practices consistent with whole language theory to help LD students become literate users of language as a communication medium

Reading comprehension skills: Testing the distinctiveness hypothesis

Abstract This study was conducted to explore the validity of the reading comprehension skills distinctiveness hypothesis. Students and teachers were randomly assigned to specific comprehension skill training groups: (a) locating details, (b) drawing conclusions, (c) finding the sequence, (d) determining the main idea, and to a control group wherein students engaged in sustained reading of self‐selected trade books. After the training period had ended the Barnell Loft Specific Skills Posttest assessing the four comprehension skills instructed was administered to all of the subjects in each of the four instructional groups and the control. The reading comprehension skill distinctiveness hypothesis would predict that scores for the skill taught would exceed the other skills measured for each skill group and the control group. A unitary hypothesis would predict concurrent gains in the skill taught as well as for all other skills measured. In this study, no differences were found among the skill instructional ...

Reading Time in School: Effect on Fourth Graders' Performance on a Criterion-Referenced Comprehension Test.

AbstractThis study explored the effect of time spent reading versus time spent learning and practicing specific reading comprehension skills as measured by criterion-referenced reading comprehension skill test (CRTs) scores. This educational question is important because many teachers and administrators are reticent to allocate more instructional time to sustained reading of connected text for fear of declining performance on locally administered CRTs. Sixty-one 4th graders were randomly assigned to three different treatment conditions: (a) reading only, (b) reading/skill instruction, and (c) skill instruction only. All the students received 30 min per day of basal reading instruction in their intact classrooms. None of the skills taught in the skill groups were taught during this time. For the remaining 30 min of the 60-min reading period, the students moved to their assigned conditions. Students in the reading-only group read books of their own choosing for 30 min each day for 30 days. Students in the s...

Prior Knowledge, Content-Related Attitude, Reading Comprehension: Testing Mathewson's Affective Model of Reading.

AbstractThis study explored the effect of content-related attitude on comprehension. Mathewson (1985) contended that prior knowledge research (Upson, 1983) may have been confounded or contaminated by subjects’ preexisting attitudes toward specific content information. The design of the study attempted to control for the effect of both prior knowledge and preexisting attitudes on reading comprehension because of the questions Mathewson (1985) raised about previous prior knowledge research. Students were randomly assigned from three blocks of reading ability (above average, average, and below average) to three treatment conditions as determined by their scores on the California Test of Basic Skills. One condition was designed to create positive attitudes toward the fictitious country of Titubia. Another condition was designed to present the information as objectively as possible. The final condition was designed to create negative attitudes toward Titubia. After documenting that the attitudes intended had b...

Whole language practices in first grade reading instruction

Abstract This study examined, through classroom observations, the degree to which whole language practices have become a part of the reading instruction offered by first‐grade teachers in six school districts in the western United States. For the purpose of finding, describing, and timing whole language practices, 16 teachers were observed for a total of 5,897 minutes of reading instruction. The results indicated that first‐grade teachers spent less than 10 percent of reading instructional time engaged in practices which could be considered in agreement with whole language theory. The fact that basal reader programs remain firmly entrenched in first‐grade reading instruction was also reconfirmed. Conventional reading practices related to the use of basal readers, workbooks, and worksheets accounted for nearly 70 percent of the reading time. The remainder of the reading instructional time observed was spent in the categories of transition and non‐instruction.